A key part of playing SL is the social element. Whether chatting or dancing (or both) with friends or partaking in pixel-sex, it’s all about interaction with others. SL’s at its most enjoyable when you’re interacting, and not just lonesomely tramping around a shopping mall.

The interactive part also extends to digesting some of the many, many blogs that exist about SL, from bloggers showing off clothes, home & garden elements, SL travel blogs or even a lifestyle blog such as this one. I have an extensive, and growing, list of blogs that I will bookmark because the writers have something valuable to say about their chosen subject.

Often, there are insights into how others live their Second Lives, and they will come up with ideas that you might not have thought of yourself, and thus you end up in locations you were previously unaware of.

That’s exactly what happened when I read Ever Afterr’s blog and saw her write about a range of poses available from Verocity Poses on the Marketplace at just L$1 per pose (or set of poses). I like poses, because they animate the photos we take for SLN. As a result of reading Ever’s post, I’ve been spreading the linden love in the direction of Verocity. I’ve managed, as a result, to enhance my own SL because I’ve interacted with someone else’s blog. So thanks for the heads up, Ever!!!!! 🙂

I’m already in Verocity’s Group, but I wasn’t aware of these super discounted poses. By a strange quirk of fate, a Verocity group notice popped up while I was writing this posting, related to these discounted poses. Synchronicity….

I teleported over there and picked out the pose (above) which isn’t part of the discounted L$1 range. This one is on their Discount Room at L$25. I thought it did have a feel of ‘and….on my right….introducing…’ about it. 🙂

I seem to have spent a bit of time today in SL’s discount rooms, finding stuff that proves that cheap doesn’t mean tacky. Yes, you might have noticed the hairstyle I’m wearing is new, and there’s a post coming up about hair later tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, below, are just three of the poses out of one pack of five I picked up for L$1. I won’t labour the point by doing dozens of poses. You get the picture. They’re cheap but they’re great.

I’ve no idea how many avatars will read or bookmark blogs, but it really is a good way in which to examine and maybe even re-tool your own SL by taking inspiration from some of the remarkable writers and bloggers out there.

Ella

Thanks to Ever Afterr for pointing me in the direction of these poses, with the subsequent photos taken near the SL Office at Su Casa.

I’m not sure how much coverage the story of Rachel Dolezal is enjoying around the world, particularly in the US, but it’s something the UK media have jumped on. The background to the story is that a leader of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington has been mis-representing her race for nigh on seven years. While claiming to be black, it appears she’s the white daughter of white parents. The curious thing is that I’ve not read, so far, of any outright lies told in the way she got the job with the NAACP. Neither am I hearing of the sort of job she has undertaken for the last seven years either. Which is a shame, because I imagine after seven years in her role it can only be assumed she’s been doing OK. There have also been claims that she told this person or that person that she was mixed-race, but so far that’s all circumstantial and doesn’t really impact on what sort of job she’s been doing. TV channel KXLY appear to have confronted her in a TV interview, however, where she apparently did lie, outright, to camera about her racial background.

Clearly, there’s some sort of Walter Mitty existence going on.

Clearly, also, some sort of re-invention has been going on. But isn’t that something we all do? On a regular basis? Obviously, none of us go so far as reinventing ourselves as a person of a different race, Ms. Dolezal and Michael Jackson apart, but we all reinvent ourselves in small ways.

A painfully shy, awkward and geeky teenager -me- reinvented herself as a confident naturist. A small reinvention, something that occurred on a fairly normal journey through life. We’ve all had circumstances where reinvention simply happened, without us apparently having much control over the process. Life gets you like that from time to time. Hairstyles, hair colour, fashion changes, piercings, tattoos…each and all represent the way in which we present ourselves, and re-present ourselves to the world.

For some, it’s maybe adopting their middle name as the name they prefer to be known by. We grow up under our parents’ influence, maybe with an unfashionable name. I’m loathe to write a name here, as all the xxxx’s will then write and say ‘hey, what’s wrong with being called xxxx?’ You know what I mean. A designer-stubbled, bespoke suit wearing millionaire playboy can be called Scott, or Adam, or something equally manly that matches the lifestyle. Being a playboy called Cyril (sorry to all the Cyrils out there) doesn’t quite tie in, doesn’t sound ‘right’. Of course, not many leading physicists would be called Scott or Adam. They might more reasonably be assumed to have something more important to say in the world of Physics by being called Cyril. Yes, a wild generalisation, but I assume you know the point I’m trying to make here.

Pops stars are called Rihanna. Or Madonna. They aren’t called Doris (sorry to all the Doris’s out there). If we’re born as Doris, we’re probably going to adopt something more outlandish for our chosen musical career.  Amelia Kelly doesn’t have quite the same ‘edgy’ quality as Iggy Azalea, does it? Oddly, Iggy Azalea has previously claimed to have some aboriginal blood (a big tick in the ‘cool roots’ column) while then going on to apparently entirely mis-represent aboriginal people. She also went on to say that ‘my family has been in Australia a long time, over 100 years, so everyone has a little Aboriginal blood in them’. Wow! A full hundred years? About five generations? And she knows that there has to be aboriginal blood because her family has an eye condition only aborigines get. Views being laughed at by many other Australians. I’d never knowingly heard any of her music, but just reading up on her makes me think that there’s more than a little re-invention going on there too.

So I put the ‘not having heard any of her music’ situation to rights, understood about one word in 50 in her ‘controversial’ (yawn!) and ‘edgy’ (yawn!) song ‘Pu$$y’. I looked the words up…

Iggy Iggy pussy illy
Wetter than the Amazon
Taste this kitty
Silly Billy poppin’ pilly’s
Smoke it like a swisher
Lick this philly
Mold em ah! Soak em ah!
Hook em like crack, after shock
Molten ah! Lava drop

Nope. Still don’t understand it. Looks like I’ll have to wait until ‘Google Translate’ comes up with a ‘Bollocks’ option alongside Creole and Esperanto. And if there’s a more worthy case of some caucasian girl with a black fixation, judging by the video, I’ve yet to see it. She’s a bad case of ‘wigga‘.

However, the main point is, we all reinvent in small ways.

Second Life offers us the opportunity to reinvent in huge ways, changing race and gender at the click of a button. The likelihood is that a sizeable proportion of SL’s population do exactly this. The SL community pages were discussing this five years ago (and probably prior to that). It’s not unique to SL. Many men, apparently, recreate themselves as women online in general computing work.

We’re all certainly reinventing ourselves in SL. A few pounds shed here and there. A few inches added (you know what I’m saying, fellas). Receding hair turned into luxurious manes. ‘Fat’ legs given the all-important, apparently, thigh gap. Saggy boobs made perkier. And so on and so on. Yes, we all subtly reinvent in RL and reinvent further in SL.

The Guardian reports on the Dolezal situation, and quotes a professor of psychology and Africana studies at Pitzer College, Halford Fairchild, who says ‘Rachel Dolezal is black because she identifies as black’. I get what he’s saying, but it still doesn’t identify the causes of someone going to such extreme lengths to reinvent when such a sham is likely to be discovered. I can see why some white person stuck in Nowheresville, middle America, may see black urban hip hop culture as glamorous, or dangerous, or exciting, and wish to replicate that. In RL, with the clothes and the music, and in SL by effectively changing race. It doesn’t seem that odd or strange, really.

It will be interesting to see how Ms Dolezal moves forward from here. Perhaps people will determine she’s doing a good job. Perhaps proven lies on her CV will be her undoing. Perhaps we might hear someone focus on whether, in her seven years in office, she has actually achieved the goals of the organisation she represents, and overseen the advancement of ‘coloured’ people. (Odd how the word ‘coloured’ now seems curiously dated).

My expectations are that Ms Dolezal will be pushed from office, regardless of her achievements.

My expectations are that people will continue to swap sex & change race in SL. Perhaps we need to consider the words of the professor, above, and suggest that if avatars identify with a certain skin tone or gender, that makes them that skin tone or gender. Is it such a bad thing anyway? Perhaps if we were to live inside the avatar head of someone of a different skin tone, or gender, we might begin to get a small understanding, via SL, of how it is to be black, or female, or male, or white. After seven years of living a black mindset, I think it’s possible that Ms Dolezal is well placed to understand the plight of ‘coloured’ people in America. Perhaps more so, as she will also understand white privilege when growing up, something no one else in the NAACP will understand to her level.

Perhaps if there are hordes of SL women out there being run my men at the keyboard, perhaps they, too, now have an understanding of the pressures placed upon women, with SL replicating RL to a degree. ‘Nice boobs, love!’ It would be interesting to see if males, who have operated female avatars, have rethought their approach to women having experienced the female perspective, albeit only from within SL.

Ella

The place where I take my naturist holidays holds a naked run/jog/walk (depending on your age or level of fitness) each year. I’ve only been in residence to witness it once, and it usually draws a reasonable crowd of naked runners as well as a decent crowd of equally naked spectators.

One thing you will notice about the female runners is that they uniformly wear a sports bra, to stop things from bouncing around too much, and therefore causing some pain. It’s odd how blogging entries on the SL blogosphere sometimes set you off on a certain blogging path of your own. Out jogging on the roads of SL, as if clad for a naked race, is model Heather, kitted out in items recently blogged on the Second Life Freebies and more site. Each day that passes this blog becomes more and more essential reading!

Heather is wearing a sports bra available from Addams Clothing and Footwear. It’s a L$0 group gift, and comes with a colour change hud that means you can make the top any colour you like. Don’t want to think of it as a sports bra? Fine. Wear it as a cropped top. There are some other free gifts there, including a looser wearing tank top, and sunglasses too.

From the same source, I read that there are men’s vintage sneakers available from the Balkanik Gallery. Again, a free group gift (no joining fee here either). Heather reports that the medium sized fitted her female feet perfectly, thus leaving her kitted out for that naked run!

Both great items to have even if you’re not planning to be part of a naked run. I think I’ll try and pick these up myself later on today.

Ella

edited to add: I’ve just received a poster for this year’s race.